I petted the seat some more.
“You know how, a long time ago, t-shirts had tags in them and you had to wear and wash them a bazillion times before they were soft?” I asked out of the blue.
He grunted out a word that sounded possibly like ‘yeah’ so I kept going.
“I was thinking how all this changed,” I said as I continued to feel up the seats. “Things didn’t used to be this soft. Which was a massive trigger for me. I had to have soft things. My dad used to dress me in his old t-shirts because they were always soft and comfy. He learned how to cut the tags out perfectly. Then, they started to change up t-shirts. Now they’re tagless and are in a soft cotton blend that isn’t scratchy at all. And they’ve come out with some great feeling sleep clothes—again, they had to be super soft or I’d be naked. I remember my dad used to have an old truck back when we were kids. I hated riding in it because it had one of those scratchy industrial seat covers on it. The kind that were universal for several truck seats. Anyway, he used to have to give me a blanket to lay over the seat so I’d even get in it.”
“Sounds like a pain in the ass,” he grumbled. “But I can see why it would bother you, I guess.”
I snickered.
“I’m weird,” I told him. “There are things about me that’ll make you sit there and question my sanity. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me now.”
He turned to look at me when we came to a stoplight.
“If I didn’t want you to be here, you wouldn’t be.”
With that, he drove in silence until we arrived at our destination.
CHAPTER 12
It’s thick girl season. All u thin crust women sit down. Deep dish coming through.
-T-shirt
BRUNO
My head hurt.
I couldn’t remember what I’d done last week, let alone last month, and the last thing I wanted to do was feed my animals.
But the moment that I pulled up in front of my barn, I knew that I’d fucked up.
Not telling anyone where I lived meant that nobody but I could take care of the animals.
It also meant that, though they could forage on their own, they hadn’t eaten ‘well’ in well over ten days.
Son of a bitch!
I hadn’t understood the urgency to get here until now, and when I got out of the truck and heard my pigs bleating like they hadn’t been fed in weeks, I couldn’t stop the rush to my steps.
“What is that?” Belle gasped, trying to hurry after me but her feet were slipping in the mud.
She stopped where she stood, looking at the mud in horror.
I’d already realized that she didn’t do anything sticky.
When she was helping me pull off the bandages, she’d made sure to get every single sticky piece that the bandages had left behind.
Even when I’d told her I would be okay.
And mud was definitely sticky.
And dirty.
And her shoes were now coated in it.
“I have some boots that I accidentally ordered in my barn,” I told her. “Come on. I’ll get your shoes taken care of after you get in there.”